China will­ing to part­ner with African projects

“I HAVE seen the new Jerusalem, and it is in China,” Dr David Monyae, the co-di­rec­tor of the Con­fu­cius In­sti­tute in Jo­han­nes­burg told a packed SA-China di­a­logue at the Univer­sity of the Wit­wa­ter­srand yes­ter­day.

Monyae re­cently re­turned from the open­ing of the Im­port Expo in Shang­hai, where 172 coun­tries and or­gan­i­sa­tions par­tic­i­pated, with 400 000 Chi­nese pur­chasers in at­ten­dance.

“It seems to me that China has con­quered the fu­ture,” Monyae said.

“It has up­lifted 700 mil­lion peo­ple out of poverty.

“I went into a fac­tory with­out a sin­gle worker on the fac­tory floor – only ma­chines.

“How are we with that?

“We are sleep­ing,” Monyae said. He em­pha­sised that, as Africans, we need to add value to our prod­ucts by ben­e­fi­ci­at­ing our re­sources, and we can no longer be sim­ply ex­port­ing our raw ma­te­ri­als.